Visa Captures Stablecoin Card Spending as Crypto Cards Scale Past $600M a Month

MiPlata's card removes a conversion step that its customers would otherwise face. The user holds USDC in the miPlata account, and a swipe is paid from that balance without a mandatory bank cash-out. miPlata is targeting unbanked and underserved Latino users across 16 countries in Latin America and the US, and says it is SOC 2 compliant. That is a security and data-handling audit, not a banking license.

Disagreement Over Who Benefits

The sources differ on what this trend means for the original premise of stablecoins. CryptoSlate argues the outcome is the "uncomfortable version" of that pitch: stablecoins were meant to route payments around card rails, yet the fastest-growing consumer product depends on Visa. Visa still sits between the user's dollar-denominated wallet and the merchant, capturing interchange, data, and the customer relationship on each transaction.

Crypto Briefing takes a more favorable view of the same mechanics, treating the removal of conversion steps and bank intermediaries as a benefit for remittance users and a sign that the barrier to launching such products has dropped. Neither source disputes the underlying flows; they disagree on whether card-linked stablecoin spending weakens or merely repositions legacy payment incumbents.

Scale Estimates and Their Range

The sources also diverge on how large this channel could become. CryptoSlate notes that $7.2 billion in cumulative on-chain card volume equals roughly 2.2% of the $322.6 billion stablecoin market cap, with USDT at $189.2 billion and USDC at $76.6 billion, per DeFiLlama. It cites McKinsey's estimate of $226 billion in annual B2B stablecoin payments and stablecoin-linked card spending of $4.5 billion in 2025, up 673% from 2024.

Projections depend on the stablecoin supply forecast used. Standard Chartered expects supply to reach $2 trillion by the end of 2028, while JPMorgan's more conservative view puts it near $500 billion. CryptoSlate calculates that holding card penetration at 2.2% implies roughly $45 billion in annual crypto-card volume under the Standard Chartered case, and about $11 billion under JPMorgan's lower case. Doubling penetration would approach $90 billion in the bull case. These are illustrative extrapolations from the article, not forecasts from either bank for card volume specifically.

Visa's Own Stablecoin Settlement

Visa's separate stablecoin settlement pilot reached a $7 billion annualized run rate as of April 29, up 50% quarter-over-quarter, and now operates across nine blockchains. Against Visa's FY2025 volume of $14.2 trillion, that figure is small, but CryptoSlate characterizes the growth rate as showing clear direction. Regulation remains unsettled, and prepaid programs depend on bank partners and program managers remaining comfortable with the arrangement, as Crypto Briefing notes.

Why It Matters

For Traders

Growing card-linked USDC and USDT spending may lift on-chain stablecoin usage, but the volume figures come from a single dataset and should be checked against issuer disclosures.

For Investors

Card networks appear to be absorbing stablecoin balances as a funding source, which suggests incumbents may capture value from stablecoin adoption rather than be displaced by it.

For Builders

Stripe Issuing and Bridge let teams launch USDC-funded Visa cards in weeks, but acceptance, compliance, and bank-partner dependencies still define the real build cost.